The Blackhat 2012 keynote started the event with Shawn Henry, former
Executive Assistant Director of the Fbi, painting a grim, seemingly
unspeakable picture of cyberespionage in the US. It was interesting that
he continually spoke about the gravity of the situation and the need to
apply what he learned at the Fbi to protecting digital assets, but he
couldn't describe a single concrete example. At the same time, other
than a weapon of mass destruction, he claimed that cyber threats are the
single biggest problem facing this nation. This inability to convey
concrete details during the Blackhat keynote only highlights some of the
problem in understanding the cyber problem. And it's the problem of
overclassification of computer network exploitation (CNE) incidents and a
tangled set of dynamics that silence breach data sharing and exchange.
There is a long way to go here to fixing it.